Oprah's Peace Corps Lite: O Really?

Hot on the heels of revamping the entire publishing industry, Oprah has apparently decided to reinvent the Peace Corps in her spare time. The new O Ambassadors are essentially younger, poorer, Oprah-backed versions of who I was in Africa after college, as far as I can tell. Good for Oprah, saving the world again and all that...right? Right?

"[Our ambition is] to give young people a direct, hands-on way to transform the lives of children who are half a world away."

"We've set up groups in schools across North America. They apply and receive a curriculum about different issues facing the worldfrom environment to health to sustainability. Then, the students take actions from fundraisers to awareness raisers, and some of them even go overseas and volunteer," Craig [Kielburger] says. "We're launching a challenge to a generation of kids to change the world."

"With Monday's hour-long appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the O Ambassadors program—a joint project of Oprah's Angel Network and Free The Children to engage and empower more than a million students across North America—today's youth have once again shown that they are dedicated to a better world."

I'll leave it to the foreign policy wonks to throw wet blankets. Me, I'm still holding out for my invitation to the future country of O.